


Variations on a Theme

by BoxWineConfessions



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: 69 (Sex Position), Age Difference, F/F, Fail sex, Fingering, Long-Distance Relationship, Oral Sex, Vulnerability and emotions, mild angst that is immediately resolved, snapchat is hard if you're in your 30s, the irresistible magnetic and often destructive power of a young queer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-10-16 10:29:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10569444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoxWineConfessions/pseuds/BoxWineConfessions
Summary: Mari doesn't like it when the past and the present overlap so easily. Mari knows the mischievous grin and the burn of eyes that linger too long. They're the trademark of girls who are still figuring out what they want, but want relentlessly. Mari is tired of letting people in, only to have to say goodbye when their vacation is over.Mila has experienced this before, this knowing little smile that implies that they know something about her body that she doesn’t. It comes across as cocky, and arrogant on men, and gentle with Mari. Mari looks like she's just told her some kind of wonderful secret.Together, they reshape their expectations.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zirta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zirta/gifts), [dracorys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracorys/gifts), [indimkr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indimkr/gifts).



Mari lights up without so much as asking if it’s all right. Everyone is either too drunk, or too in love to care really. Victor and Yuuri’s arms are linked together and they’re feeding each other little sips of sake in the same way they locked arms and drank champagne during their wedding ceremony. Except this time they’re about three shared bottles of sake deep, and have no signs of stopping. “Yuu-ri,” Victor says with a smile, “I’m not holding your hair on the train tomorrow if you feel sick.”

“I’m not letting you in the hotel room if you lock yourself out. Even if you’re in nothing but your underwear again then,” Yuuri beams right back.

Minako started before everyone else, and drank more than her fair share of shochu at dinner. Over and over again she proclaimed, “it’s like water. Hydrating. Very good.” Minako’s English was usually quite good, but this had to be the worst English she’s ever heard someone drunkenly utter. Mari took her by the elbow and led her back to her hotel room so she could sleep it off. That was almost an hour ago.

Phichit and Chris have their faces pressed together while they look at Chris’ phone. Mari didn’t catch all of their conversation, but Chris definitely said in mangled Japanese “rabuho,” love hotel. She wants to tell them to stay away from Hotel Malta because there’s a better place down the street, but she doesn’t have the energy to explain the why and the how of how she knows. Of course, Chris would ask.

Yurio is feeding Otabek 5000 yen a plate bites of fugu with his hands, because he can’t use chopsticks. Otabek looks white as a sheet, as if he were about to be sick. Yuri explained to him with the rare cheerful voice that he keeps for a rainy day, “The fish is poisonous. Let’s hope the chef was careful. You could totally die.”

Despite his fearful affect, Otabek accepts the food directly from Yuri’s fingers. She wonders if Yuri knows how he looks right now, especially since he gives her brother so much shit for being overly affectionate with Victor.

“That really stinks you know.” Mari turns to the girl seated next to her. She’s ruby colored hair and sapphire blue eyes. The natural gem tones in her face makes the little delicate chain inlaid with emeralds and diamonds around her neck seem superfluous.

Mari doesn’t know Mila that well. It’s the first time they’ve met directly. Yet, they have a photo of her at the onsen. Her, and Yurio, and the pairs couple on the podium for the figure skating team event. They took gold despite the fact that Yuri only won silver in his individual event.

It’s kind of strange. You shouldn’t have a photo of a stranger in your house like that.

Mari takes a long drag off of her cigarette before putting it out into the small glass ashtray. She could ask the waiter to turn on the large fan above that was specifically designed to pull smoke away, or she could just not be an ass.

After all, she did have a photo of this girl in her house.

“You don’t smell great yourself,” Mari’s mouth pulls into a smile. She smells thick and earthy, sweet, like the big wide cedar chest in her mother’s room. Unlike the antique chest, her scent is strong, as if she were using it to cover up other odors.

“It’s patchouli,” Mila explains, and pulls a vial from her purse. “I like the way it smells. It reminds me of my brother.” She undoes the stopper and holds the bottle in front of Mari’s nose. She’s been breathing in the scent all night, she doesn’t need more of it to know that it’s bad.”

“That’s a lot of explanation to smell so bad.” Mari chuckles.

“My brother lives in Utah. He’s a snowboarding instructor,” Mila supplies as if that is supposed to be more than adequate explanation.

“I get it.” Mari responds. “Yuuri always smelled like talcum powder.”

Mila grabs her drink, a large green bubble tea. She chases the straw around the rim of the glass, and drinks the rest of the liquid. When she sets it back down on the table, right in the center of several condensation rings, Mari realizes that there’s pearl pink lipstick on the straw. The tip is chewed lightly. “I’m tired of watching everyone make eyes at each other. I think I saw an arcade across the street?” Mila says. She doesn’t look at Mari while she says it but her eyes are trained first on Yuri and Otabek, then Victor and Yuri, and finally Phichit and Chris. “I want to win a souvenir.”

“You want some company?” Mari picks her phone up off of the black lacquered table, and reveals no less than four rubber phone straps attached to her iphone case. Each one was carefully plucked from a UFO machine in the Taito Station in Hasetsu. The arcade wasn’t as fun as pachinko, she couldn’t smoke inside, but at least she left with little toys sometimes, as opposed to coming home empty handed after a night parked at a machine. “I’m good at those.”

Mila smiles. “Sure.”

The inside of the Taito Station is loud. Mari usually steals down to the one at Taito station in the middle of the day between lunch and dinner rush. There’s nothing but kids in their late teens in between part time jobs and really little children outside with their parents pumping 100 yen coins into the gachapons.

Mari’s eyes immediately settle on a large machine that’s front and center to the entrance. It’s a beginner’s mistake, but she’s got a wad of 1000 yen bills in her purse, an itch in her palms, and a girl that smells like mulch by her side. The machine packed with large Gudetama egg plushies that look half as tall as her. It’s ambitious. She hasn’t tried for a big item like that ever since she watched a Doraemon movie with the triplets, and she had to win each of them a plush. The same kind of compulsive feeling has inhabited the tips of her fingers that itch to get onto a joystick as soon as possible. She’s not leaving here without the egg.

Tonight the noises inside the arcae are more intense than usual. She’s used to the anime theme songs pumped from each machine. Tonight it is accompanied by the loud laughter of teenagers, and the exaggeratedly loud chatter of people in their twenties that wandered in in-between bar hopping.

Normally, Mari would dart straight to the Gudetama machine, or one of the many Osomatsu machines crammed into the back. However, you can learn a lot about a person by watching which machine they fixate on. You can learn even more about a foreigner the first time they go to the arcade.

“Oh my gosh!” Mila exclaims and darts towards a machine. In the process she nearly topples over a girl, still in her high school uniform out long after curfew. “Is that Sailor Moon?” Immediately, Mila stuffs a one hundred yen coin into the slot. She hits the button to go over, but releases it too soon. She whines in protest. “You can’t keep moving it after you let go? What a ripoff.”

Quickly, she gets over her disappointment and moves the claw back. She watches with wide hopeful eyes as the claw drops, wraps around the plastic ring attached to the wand toy, and picks it up. As if on cue, Mila claps her hands together with delight, and the toy drops from the crane before it can be deposited safely into the drop zone.

Mari watches Mila repeat this process a dozen more times.

“Rigged!” She mutters under her breath each and every time, but it doesn’t stop her from going to the change machine and stuffing in 1000 yen bills. Her depth perception gets better, and she gets better at pressing and releasing the buttons closer to the desired keychain.

Mari refuses to step in. Where’s the fun in wasting your one good parlor trick on a small keychain?

“Mari!” Mila turns and wriggles in excitement. Mari doesn’t think it’s cute. It simply says a lot about her. That she could be so excited after spending so much on a small toy. “Look.” She points to the crane, and together they watch the wand drop.

“Good work.”

Mari digs it out of the receptacle and pockets it. “I mean Sailor Mercury is good, but I kinda wanted Sailor Mars.”

Mari sighs. Okay, maybe it’s worth using up her trick right away. She’s still getting that damn egg. “Lemme try.”

On her first attempt Mari extracts a sailor Jupiter wand. It’s not the one that Mila wanted, but it makes her eyes go wide and makes her exclaim, “how did you do that?”

“I do this a lot when I’m bored,” Mari explains without taking her eyes off the glass. “The arcade in Hasetsu is open later than most bars.”

She extracts another Sailor Mercury wand, before finally jostling the Sailor Mars wand to the right position and it too raises from the rest of the wands and floats in mid air before unceremoniously dropping into the catch zone.

For a moment Mari debates keeping the ones that aren't the one that Mila wants. She could trade these in for store credit at the hobby store in Hasetsu...Or...She hands all the wands over to Mila. She could be nice. “Here.”

“You don’t want any of them?”

“I liked sailor moon well enough when I was a kid but,” Mari drifts over to the change machine. The egg is going to be expensive. “I saw Utena? And like, it was so good it ruined magical girls for me forever.”

“Utena? I don’t know it.” Mila responds. “I’m gonna watch it. I watched Card Captors Sakura. I liked it.”

“Uh, Utena is a little…” Mari waves her hand. “Different.” After collecting a fist full of 100 yen coins, Mari shoves 500 yen into the machine without blinking an eye. “Okay, you see that one?” Mari points to the plush on top. He’s sleeping on the white part of the egg and covered by a strip of bacon that acts as a blanket.

Mila nods.

“You like it?” Cause she’ll gladly take the little egg home herself. It would look cute with the onigiri pillow that Yuuri gave her from one of his many kiss and cry hauls.

“Cute but weird.”

“Okay. I’m gonna get it for you as a souvenir.”

“No way!” Mila responds. “That guy,” she gestures with perfect french tip nails to the adjacent machine, “has been at it since before we got here.”

“Yeah, and I have the magic touch,” Mari wriggles her fingers and rests her dominant hand on the forward arrow.

Mari catches sight of Mila’s reflection as the other woman leans into the glass. Mari doesn’t go to the arcade with others often. When she does, it’s usually Yuuri, and she loses him instantly because he likes to go up to the top floors and play Taiko: Drum Master. The last time she took someone to the arcade was…

Mari holds down the back arrow for too long, and swears underneath her breath when the crane drops.

Her name was Shine. Her parents were wealthy executives in Singapore. They stayed in Hasetsu for two and a half months, and visited the Onsen almost every day. Her father had suffered a heart attack that winter, and his doctor told him to rest. The family’s solution to this was a two month long vacation.

Shine was in between undergrad and graduate school. She told Mari with a large smile on her face that she’d been rejected to every medical school she applied to in China, and Hong Kong, and Singapore. It was okay though. She’d been accepted into her safety school for a Master of Public Health program in America.

Shine was so happy to go, “I’ve never failed at anything before.”

And Mari always thought that it was so strange that she thought a Master’s degree was failing. Shine ordered wakame salad every day. Shine went down to the park and did public exercises despite being the youngest person there by at least twenty years. Shine bought a bright red leather backpack meant for school children. It made her look much younger than she actually was.

Decades ago, Shine stood against the glass of the UFO catcher and stared. Mari won her a One Piece phone strap. Tony Chopper. Afterward, they went out for ramen. Shine kissed her when the shop keeper’s back was turned. Mari fingered her at one in the morning in the onsen later that night.

Mari doesn’t exactly like it when the past and the present overlap so easily.

“Show me then.” Mila teases.

Mari breaks the gaze she held in the reflection of the UFO catcher and looks at Mila directly. The timer on the machine is already going. It does that, whenever you load a lot of money in at once.

“The magic touch. I want him as my new travel pillow.” The diamonds in Mila’s necklace shine pink and blue in the neon lights of the arcade. Mari wonders how many tens of thousands of yen worth of designer clothing she’s wearing tonight between the jewelry and the dress and the shoes.

“You gotta get a feel for it first.” Mari knows for a fact she has fifteen hundred yen in heavy coins in her pocket. She hopes it’s enough.

Mari manipulates the toy back into position for the price of seven hundred yen. She gets it with four more tries.

Mila’s smile is wide, and Mari catches it only for a half second before she buries it into the plush yellow fabric of the toy. Their hands meet slightly for a moment when she passes it off. She’s not sure if eleven hundred yen is an appallingly steep price for a half second worth of smile, or a bargain.

Both of them fail miserably at a few rounds of Drum Master. Then they try a shooting game. They’re both bad at that as well. Finally, they’re ushered outside by the arcade attendants. It’s well after midnight, and the arcade closes at one. Together, they wander outside to the rapidly emptying streets. Everyone moves quickly in order to catch the last trains from the station. Mari and Minako are staying in adjoining rooms at the ryokan they’d been drinking in. Mila is staying at the hotel adjacent to the arena.

Mari lingers awkwardly on the sidewalk, with crumpled pack of Mevius 100s in her hand. The cigarette dangles limply in her mouth. What is appropriate here? Does she need to walk her back? It wasn’t a date, but it certainly feels like one. Not to mention, it’s easy to get turned around.

“What do you like?” Mila gestures to a row of gachapon machines outside of the arcade. “Any of these?”

“Oh,” Mari shoots the row a lightning fast glance. She likes the ones in touristy spots. Osaka castle, Odawara, Beppu, but there’s nothing special about Saitama. “You don’t need to get me anything.”

“I want to. Since,” Mila gestures to the little white bag slung over her shoulder. An attendant came over and helped her shove the plush inside. Mila has her Sailor Moon keychains in there too, and a Todomatsu phone strap, because Mari already had one so she gave it to Mila.

“I like Osomatsu,” she says tapping on one of the plastic capsules. “Get me one of these.”

Mila digs a few coins out of her pockets and cranks the dial. She hands the bubble package to Mari.

“Ah no way!” Mari unwraps the packaging and can’t contain her grin. She wants to take Mila by the shoulders and shake her. “Look it’s ESP kitty! He’s really rare. Thank you!”

They walk together in silence after that. Their shoulders bump together awkwardly when they make space on the narrow sidewalk to make room for passers by. “Isn’t your hotel the opposite direction?” Mari asks finally.

“I’m walking you back,” Mila throws her a big cheeky grin over her shoulder. Now that’s worth eleven hundred yen for sure.

“You’re the one who can’t speak the language or read the signs,” it’s the kind of thing that would be cute, if it weren’t so impractical.

“I left my railpass in Victor and Yuuri’s room.”

“Oh god let’s hope they open the door.”

In the end, Victor and Yuuri do open the door, and Mila gets her rail pass. Mari doesn’t think much about her time in Saitama after that. Golden week comes and goes, and they have too many guests for her to think about arcades, or girls who go to arcades dressed to the nines.

* * *

 

She doesn’t think about it at all, until she gets a snap about a month or so after worlds. Yurio’s gone to Almaty to help Otabek recover from his surgery. Otabek has been sleeping a lot. She gets two or three snaps per day of the injured skater with blankets pulled over his face, or his mouth wide open in a snore. Mari can’t help but think it’s intrusive.

Her phone chirps while she’s folding Onsen robes. Mari folds the green robe in her hand with swift movements. Grab the collar, shake, smooth, fold. Then, she grabs her phone. The snap is a selfie of Yurio. He’s making a pained face while he sits in between a woman with thick black eyeliner and a little girl. She can only assume this is Otabek’s family. “Hag, accept Mila’s add request on snapchat. She won’t stop fucking blowing up my phone about it.”

Mari switches over to her settings, accepts the new screen name that appeared in her pending list, and switches over to the camera. Mari rifles through her phone straps until she finds the newest one. It’s a blue strap of Karamatsu, complete with sunglasses his sparkle pants. Awkwardly she twists the strap so she can take a photo of it. “Got a new one,” she adds to the caption.

Mari folds a few more robes. Collar, shake, smooth, fold. They use a strong industrial laundry detergent that wears out the fabric. Mari always makes certain to add extra fabric softener, today she worked through almost an entire container of lavender softener, and the scent fills the linen room.

It makes her want to smoke. Her phone pings with a notification. Mari swipes snapchat open. It’s from Mila, no surprise. “He misses you,” it’s a snapshot of the egg plushie she’d triumphantly pulled from the UFO catcher. He’s resting on a pale pink duvet with red embroidered flowers. It looks like the kind of room of a woman who hasn’t changed the decor since she was fourteen or fifteen. Mari knows this because she had Keroppi the frog sheets on her bed until she wore a hole in the fitted sheet that couldn’t be repaired. She was well into her mid twenties at the time.

Mari sneaks out the back door and lights up as soon as she crosses the threshold. She considers the pros and and the cons of taking a selfie. It’s not as if it’s some kind of secret that she burns through a pack a day. Plus, Yuuko and the girls didn’t come in for lunch today. She remembers her saying something about going to the shopping center to get school supplies for the girls. Victor and Yuuri took the train to Fukuoka to meet with Minami and debut his new routines. Mom’s on a health kick and walked down to the pet store to look at puppies again. They both know she’ll stop for soft serve between the pet store and home. God only knows where dad is.

The fact of the matter is, she might be lonely. Mari snaps a photo of herself, and quickly deletes it. The bags under her eyes are particularly pronounced today. She’s running on maybe four hours of sleep today. She looks washed out in the afternoon sun. Instead she ducks back inside and takes a photo of the mountains of unfolded linens. “Help me.” She captions the photo.

The laundry actually goes quickly without mom there to chat her ear off about who in town is getting married, and who is pregnant, and who is getting divorced, and who is rumored to be having an affair. Mari has her favorite Kpop station on Spotify, and the shuffle gods are on her side today. It would be perfect, if it weren’t for the constant pinging of snapchat interrupting while she worked.

Once the laundry is taken care of, she checks her phone.

There’s a still photo of Mila’s laptop screen. It looks like a Macbook with a bright pink protective case snapped around the edges. On the screen is the sword sequence from Revolutionary Girl Utena. Utena is pulling the sword from Anthy’s chest in a passionate embrace. She loves that part of each episode.

The caption reads, “You didn’t tell me this had gay shit in it!!!!” Followed by several heart eye emojis.

There’s another snap of Anthy and Utena dancing together at the ball. “OMG!!” is the caption.

Mari simply responds using the chat feature, “You didn’t tell me you liked gay shit.”

“Well I do,” is the near instant response. It’s a selfie. Mila is wearing what looks like flannel pink pajamas that have gone through a few too many washes. She’s still wearing lip gloss.

Mari trudges out to the lobby and wanders around until she finds a dog. Kuro and Makkachin are curled up together sleeping. “It gets gayer. And weirder.” She captions the photo.

“I can’t wait!” Mila’s leaning forward slightly in the next selfie. A silken smooth swath of skin is exposed just before the first button. Mari can see the smallest line of cleavage.

Mari hits the top button on her phone along with the main button and screen caps it.

The next day Yurio sends her a snap, “You know that snapchat shows if you screenshot something?” It’s a screenshot of a notification that Mari took a screenshot. Mila sent it to Yurio.

Mari is parked in front of the television, pouring herself a glass of sho-chu. Mom’s cleaning up the kitchen tonight, so it’s officially her half night off.

Mari spills sho-chu all across her lap and on top of her phone when she sees the message.   
Mari types, “I’m sorry,” into the chat screen and delete it. She retypes the words three more ties, and deletes them three more times. Mari turns off her phone, grabs the bottle of sho-chu, and ties her sneakers by the door. Hopefully Minako isn’t busy tonight. She’d like to drink with someone.

* * *

  
“You know Mari, usually when you go to a bar, you buy a drink, you don’t bring one from home,” Minako looks from Mari to the half empty bottle of sho-chu in her hand.

“So stop bringing giant bottles of Kirin with you when you tumble in half lit for food.” Minako puts a glass on the counter wordlessly.

Mari fills the glass and drains it. Instantly she refills it.

“What’s got you in such a good mood,” Minako’s tone and posture is disinterested. She’s refixing her lipstick with a compact now that she’s done her best friend duty and offered Mari a glass.

“I took a screenshot of a 19 year old’s cleavage on Snapchat. Then she found out because the app gives you a notification when that happens.”

“Mari,” Minako procures a tall silver can of Asahi Super Dry from the cooler underneath the counter. “I don’t understand most of those words.”

* * *

  
Mari turns her phone back on the next morning at exactly 5:30 A.M. Turns out she doesn’t even need her alarm. Her body is trained from years and years of waking up before everyone else, if only to steal a few quiet moments alone before she has to be a daughter, and a business manager, and a hostess, and a sister, and a sister-in-law. She wakes up at exactly 5:30 A.M. despite the fact that every fiber of her being protests it. Her head hurts, her mouth is dry, and her back is inexplicably sore.

Wait...It all comes back to her. She knows why she’s sore. She remembers insisting to Minako that she remembers her ballet positions despite not being in a ballet class for almost twenty years. This of course, is a blatant lie.

Much to her dismay, she sees not one, not two, but six angry red notifications that linger over the corner of the app. There’s no way they’re all from Yurio. For a moment Mari considers simply deleting the app. She really only snapped Yurio. One time she got a snap from Otabek, but it was pretty clear that Yurio just had his phone. Victor uses it sometimes, but they live together for the time being. She knows what he’s up to in almost too intimate detail. Sometimes the triplets will snap her. She rarely responds to these however. She feels strange exchanging messages with eight year olds.

Which means probabilistically, at least one of these is from Mila.

Mari doesn’t open the app right away. She goes through the motions of washing the alcohol laden sweat from her skin, pulling a maroon colored onsen uniform from her closet, tying back her hair, brushing her teeth, and making breakfast.

While she spoon big mouthfuls of rice porridge into her mouth she lets her finger hover over the app. Her original intention was to press down onto the icon so she could delete it. Instead, against her better judgement, she opens the app.

“Yuri is such an ass,” accompanied by Mila making an angry face.

“I mean, maybe I’m an ass for saying something to him and not to you directly.” There we go.

“It’s literally not a big deal.”

“Seriously.”

“SERIOUSLY.” And, her top unbuttoned? Mari tries to piece together mentally this snap, alongside the last snap, and it definitely looks like her shirt is undone down to her stomach. There’s more skin revealed, and more cleavage.

Oh god.

This is somehow worse than a negative reaction.

Mari snaps a photo of her coffee and her breakfast. “I’m too old for this shit,” she responds.


	2. Chapter 2

Mari snaps a photo of her coffee and her breakfast. “I’m too old for this shit,” she responds.

Mari leaves her phone upstairs as she cycles through her daily chores. Meal prep, laundry, sweeping the main area, and mopping before lunch. Then, gets the bath clean in the late afternoon. Nothing is out of place, save for the empty space in her pocket, and the lack of anything to do when she sneaks out the back door for a cigarette.

The day marches forward as normal, save for the empty feeling in her pocket and the lack of anything to really do while she sneaks out the back for a smoke.

It’s not irritating per-se, but she’s dealt with this kind of thing before. The reckless and addictive attitude of girls who have just decided that they like girls is nothing to be underestimated. It’s all consuming, it's innocent, it’s destructive, all at the same time.

When Mari finally checks her phone, it’s late. All her chores are done, plus she’s got a good start on things for tomorrow. That way mom doesn’t need to get up so early. She can go down to group exercises down at the park, or she can go down to the pet store and look at the puppies, or she just sit at a cafe and read. She likes doing that when she has the time.

Mari’s got a cup of some of the chamomile tea that Victor bought her. He worries about how she doesn’t sleep much, and this is his solution. The tea is good, and it does make her feel more relaxed, but it doesn’t help her sleep through the night. She’s also got an unlit cigarette balanced between her fingers.

Mari settles into bed, and taps in her password.

The snap is a simple black screen. “I’m sorry. I wanna be friends. I had fun with you in Saitama. If you wanna talk, here’s my LINE SN.”

Mari lights up the cigarette. Then opens up her LINE app.

“Look, let’s just forget about it,” Mari had fun too.

“Whhhyyyyyyyy are you still awake?” Mila responds.

Mari looks at the top of her screen. It’s almost two A.M. which means that it is….Mari does mental arithmetic trying to determine what time it is in St. Petersburg. She can only assume that it’s not quite so late there. “I don’t really sleep much.” Mari supplies. Her family understands that it just doesn’t happen. It’s strange how both Victor and Mila seem to take it so personally.

“Okay, let me tell you a bedtime story,” Mila types out in response.

Immediately the screen flashes three little dots in gradient succession, gray, dark gray, and black.

One minute passes by, then two. The little gray dots don’t fade. Mila wasn’t kidding when she said that she was going to tell her a bedtime story. “So Yuri bought a motorcycle, probably you know because Otabek has one. It’s really expensive too. Yuri spent a lot of time getting it waxed, and finding the right kind of stupid tiger decal to put on it, and then when he parked it down at the beach he forgot to put the kickstand up and it toppled over. He’s literally had it for less than a week. He was so furious Mari. Like I’ve seen him get angry before, but nothing like this.”

Mari laughs. She’s seen pictures and decided that Yuri has no business with such an expensive toy.

“Yuuri left the toilet seat up. Victor sat down and fell. I know all of this because I woke up at 4 AM last night to yelling and sobbing. Everyone ran down the hallway to make sure he was okay.”

“OMGGGGGGGGGGGG.”

 

* * *

Minako takes a swig of champagne straight from the bottle. She often does this when she tires of beer, but Mari can’t help but think that it’s strange. “You should really pay someone to do this.”

“Why? It’s just bleach. It turns out just fine.”

Minako pushes Mari’s hair, laden with peroxide and chemicals, up away from her face and onto the crown of her head. She pins it into place with a large brown clip.

“You’re just a cheapskate.” Minako complains. “You want some of this?” She changes the subject and gestures to the green glas bottle. The gold wrapper on the top wasn’t peeled away properly, and sticks out in jagged little edges over the mouth of the bottle.

“Not really.”

“Well I’m not opening the whiskey. I have classes tomorrow.”

Mari smiles. It’s clear that Minako wants to open the whiskey. Really badly.

Minako finishes the rest of the champagne without so much as hiccuping on the bubbles. Then she moves a few dirty plates from one side of the sink to the other instead of washing them. “Okay, let’s rinse.”

Mari has to fight the urge to just do the dishes for her friend.

After Minako has rinsed her hair, and she’s used Minako’s vermillion red blow drier to dry her hair, she grabs her phone, and takes a selfie. Her hair is an even tone of gold, save for the top, which always gets bleached a little lighter so that it’s almost white. “Evened out,” she captioned the snap.

Mila responds almost an hour later. Between herself and Minako, the bottle of whiskey has been decimated.

“Pretty,” the caption reads. Someone else took the photo. It is of Mila in a laying back Ina Bauer. Mari thinks that the caption much better describes Mila than it does her hair. Mari’s phone chirps again. “You should show your face more often.” To contradict this, Mila’s attached a shot of her face, covered predominantly by a pink gloved hand. 

* * *

 

“Can I ask you about something?” Mari looks at the words, puts her phone back into her pocket, and thinks about the question. She thinks about the little white letters across black screen so much so that the words imprint onto her eyelids when she closes them.

Mari’s phone chirps again. Talking to Mila throughout the day is nice, but it also means that her work has become disjointed. Little interruptions throughout the day that remind her of perfectly applied lip gloss, and creamy exposed skin, and a smile buried beneath a simple arcade plush. In some ways it’s nice. She’s had to work through crushes before. She’s had to keep going through the motions of keeping the onsen going while she stole furtive glances of girls wrapped in towels, or avoid staring at toned men because that is what was expected. In other ways, it's strange, having someone so accessible and simultaneously so far away.

Mari looks at her phone again. “I don’t have a lot of women to talk to about this kind of thing.”

And then before Mari can even consider responding, there’s another message on the screen. “It’s a gay thing.”

“Sure,” Mari responds. Only because, “Sure. But, I’m not sure if I’m ready to help another girl sort through her sexual identity, while she simultaneously crushes on me, and crushes me emotionally.” Is a bit too long and a bit too histrionic to type. Simultaneously, “I know all about gay things,” seems far to glib for the situation at hand.

Three summers ago there was Yui, a businesswoman on vacation from Minato, Tokyo. She was about Mari’s age. Twenty eight or twenty nine. She bought Mari all kinds of nice things. A silver cigarette holder which she would never actually use. A pair of orthopedic sandals. A new stationary set. Yui had never been with a woman before, and was considering legal separation from her husband.

Yui came back to Hasetsu in October and told Mari that she loved her, but it wasn’t worth leaving her husband for.

Mari sighs and feels her chest tug with guilt. She should’ve known what was going to happen in that situation. It’s not their fault that she makes really bad decisions. It’s not their fault that she keep falling for people that don’t have a reason or motivation to stay.

“Always okay to talk about that,” Mari’s expression softens, because she understands how hard it can be. She knows every queer woman in Hasetsu. Her, Minko, Yumi Akamine (who lived in Osaka now), Nanami Fukudu, and Mei Abe who was officially out of the loop. She married a man, and she quietly removed herself from the increasingly small social circle of women in Hasetsu who like women. They’ll have her back any time.

“I went out for tea with this girl. I thought it was going well.”

Mari would normally go back to cleaning the large windows that let in natural light into the indoor bathing room, but instead she watches with rapt fascination as the little typing bubbles flash across the screen.

“She’s a personal trainer, so she, gets it. You know? She gets why I can’t have a cookie. Why I can’t go out most Friday nights. But she also isn’t a complete mess.” She sends another message quickly. “Like athletes are weird in relationships. I’ve dated enough. Anyway.”

“Things were going well. Then I told her I was bi.”

Mari doesn’t need to read the following message to know what happened next.

“Like, the fact that I still might date a guy again someday was offensive to her. It’s so freaking unfair.”

Mari considers for a moment the best way to respond. Her initial reaction is to simply tell Mila that whoever this girl was, no matter how pretty, or sexy, or nice seeming she was, it was best that they got this out of the way earlier than later. There might be hurt, but it’s superficial. Not the kind that leaves big ugly scars.

Nevertheless, she deletes the comment, “she sounds like trash,” in lieu of sending it.

“Like that somehow makes me a less better person.”

“Well first of all, it doesn’t.” Mari sends the message because sometimes you need to hear the obvious in these situations.

“It’s just so fucking frustrating. It’s hard to meet girls in St. Petersburg. I’m almost twenty, but it seems like all the girls my age are already in relationships. The ones that are looking are freaking twats.”

Mari giggles. That was a universal constant. Certainly not something limited to St. Petersburg, or the small sliver of the female population that liked women. “Do you wanna date someone, or do you wanna get laid?”

“Either,” Mila responds. “With the STRONG PREFERENCE that they’re a decent human that I can get along with.”

“Not to sound like that bitter old cynical lesbian but,” Mari sends the message

“Please be that bitter old cynical lesbian.”

“That’s a really tall order babe.”

“Do you care?”

Mari stares at the question. Care about what? She sends a row of question marks in response.

“If a girl is bi.”

Mari isn’t stupid. She can see where this is heading. “No.” The single word response is the most natural thing that she can think to say.

Mari continues to type words, delete them, and retype them again. It a difficult thing to explain. “I have dated a lot of bi girls. It’s not like our relationship failed because they were bi. A lot of people think that I think. It’s easier to pass off blame instead of looking inward.”

“Come to St. Petersburg and date me.”

Mari shoves her phone back into her pocket. She’s tempted to throw it in the same way Yurio does. Across the room with wild abandon. However she dropped it last month and paid to have the screen replaced. So much for being nice.

Mari squeegees the windows until she can see her reflection in them. Then she refills all the containers of soap and shampoo in the showers. Then she mops the whole indoor bath so that the scent of bleach crawls into her nose and settles into her lungs and the back of her brain. It scrubs everything raw so that she doesn’t have to think about any of it.

* * *

 

“Drinking with Minako tonight?” Mila sends her a message over LINE.

It’s late. Minako still moves languidly through the two or three patrons that are still in her bar. Her long limbs reach out and place soft touches on patrons’ shoulders. She rotates on her feet seamlessly and elegantly, as if she’s taken the center stage. Mari drifted in after the last of the patrons at Yuu-topia had drank their fill with two bottles of sho-chu in hand.

“Got ya some ice on the bar Mari.”

“Thanks.” She pours her first drink and sends Mila a responding snap. “Of course.”

“Did you bring me any leftovers? Hiroko said you were making curry and tempura,” she unloads drinks from her tray onto the customer’s table, and speaks in the same sing-song voice that she uses with her students and with her customers and whenever she’s trying to get Yuuri to do something that he does not want to do.

“There weren’t any,” Mari supplies too quickly.

“Uh-huh,” before she understands what’s going on, Minako is up in her space and all but leering at her. “You ate it all. I can see the guilt in your eyes. I can smell the curry on your breath.”

Mari shakes a cigarette from her pack and lights it up. Then, she opens her bag. From it, she pulls out a Bento. The designs have rubbed off from too many trips through the dishwasher. It’s got a blue and white pattern across it signifying that at one point, it must have belonged to Yuuri.

“Yippiee!”

Minako sets her tray on the bar and hops over it in one single fluid motion that’s far too graceful for a woman who is older than her mother. Only after Minako’s heeled boots smack against the floor and rattle the bottles against the bar does Mari comment, “Watch yourself crow. You’ll break a hip.”

“Mari,” Minako says in between ravenous bites of food. Mari finds it funny how the woman who told her her entire life to be ladylike somehow has worse table manners than Yurio. “You have a lot of nerve. Do you even know what smoking does to your bones? Not to mention, I doubt you’re taking any calcium supplements or anything like that. And you know your mom has osteoporosis-” Minako punctuates her mini-tirade with a long draught of Kirin. Minako doesn’t even pour herself a glass, she just drinks straight from the large amber colored bottle. Her customers are used to it by now.

“Right, mom.”

As if on cue, Mari’s phone chirps. She doesn’t have to look at the screen to know who the message is from. Victor and Yuuri were bathing when she left. Mom and dad were in bed. She was with Minako which meant really…

“Mom? Huh?” Minako smirks. She’s been doing that a lot ever since the screen capture debacle. Giving her this smirk and this little knowing look. Mari knows what it’s about. She just refuses to acknowledge it.

Mari turns her phone over in her hand. She’s greeted with a snap of a four cocktails. Each one is a different neon shade: pink, red, green, and blue. She wonders which one is Mila’s. She tries not to think about pouring Mila a tall glass of Kirin and watching her wince at the bitter taste. “Out with Georgi, his fiancee, and my sister.”

Mari’s attention is pulled away from her phone by the harsh sound of glass hitting against glass. Minako has drained the Kirin with a dangerous speed and reaches for another. “Let’s drink tonight Mari.”

“What are we doing right now?” Mari lights up another cigarette.

“I mean really drink. Drink like back when your parents wouldn’t speak to me.”

* * *

 

It wasn’t a secret or anything that Mari was super gay. When she was young, and went to ballet lessons still, she openly discussed how she was going to marry Minako. Not only would they marry, she would become a ballet dancer too. She’d play the prince in Swan Lake, and Romeo and Juliet, and Minako would star alongside of her.

Yeah right.

It wasn’t a secret or anything that none of Mari’s candor went away with time. It changed overtime, and became less childish, but it never went anywhere. Open proposals of marriage morphed into bringing Minako special foods and special cocktails that she made herself in the kitchen. It meant putting on low cut tops before work. It meant arguments with her mother, who would make her go upstairs and put on something else because it was improper for a young girl to serve alcohol in such clothes.

But she never said anything about Mari serving alcohol while underage.

It meant sitting too close to Minako in the onsen. It meant letting her robe fall wide open exposing her chest when she was goofing off, and slowly pulling it closed.

By the time Minako actually did anything about it, and when the pressure became too much to bear, Mari’s parents had already caught her countless times with girls from all over Japan, and all over the globe.

Mari was twenty and drinking at Minako’s bar for the first time. Minako turned off the “open” light and Mari turned to gather her things and go. Mari remembers that at the time, she’d been carrying a pale blue umbrella with pastel baby ducks on it.

Minako placed a hand over hers and said simply, “You can stay for another drink if you’d like.”

Mari was sober when they went upstairs together. She took one sip of the night cap that Minako poured her and then their hands were upon each other. It seemed as if they’d both been waiting a long time.

To this very day, Minako has been the only woman with impossibly long fingernails that knew how to use them without hurting. To this very day, Mari will never forget the way that her room smelled of Chanel Number Five, and cloves, and talcum powder. The furniture was all antique, and she had all sorts of pieces of silver scattered about casually. A sterling silver hand mirror, hairbrush, and comb. Really elegant.

Mari’s parents had caught her with girls from all over Japan, and the world. She was twenty, and could eat pussy like a champ. The problem was, she was twenty, and she was sleeping around with her mom’s best friend.

For a brief moment in time, Mari wondered if they would’ve been less upset if they were actually dating. Minako made it clear that everything that happened between them was strictly sexual. Mari would show up at Minako’s after work, take off her shoes, enter the bar, and wait. She’d be flushed and out of breath from running.

Mari would bring Minako leftovers.

Minako would pour Mari a drink.

That’s all they ever did. Eat, drink, fuck. No dates, no ballet, no worrying her lip until a confession of love slipped out between the sheets and Minako’s perfectly unblemished skin. At first this upset Mari, and then in the way that things happen when you’re twenty, the pain went away instantaneously. Mari didn’t go to college, but she was selected for a year long hospitality training program in Kyoto.

Mari didn’t call Minako once during the year. While the onsen let her meet girls from all over Japan and Asia, Kyoto let her meet girls from all over the world. There was Cornelia from Germany, and Dagmara from Poland, and Simon from England. Her dirty little secret...She had to try it just once to see if she liked it. Turns out, boys were way better to look at than they were to touch.

* * *

 

“That a proposition Okukawa?”

“Not really,” Minako responds as she pulls her mouth off the rim of the bottle. “I’m almost dating someone from Beppu, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mari waves her hand dismissively. She’ll let Minako come every weekend, and buy her groceries, and take her out, but won’t give it up. Mari is highly suspicious.

Mari unlocks her phone. She’s got a series of line messages from Mila. “At a club now.” Followed by, “Georgi’s candance,” which Mari assumes means, can’t. But Mari’s unsure. The messages are increasingly riddled with typos.

“Just kinda feels a little nostalgic doesn’t it?” Minako says in the voice that’s honey mixed with venom. It’s watered down so that the venom is non-fatal, simply teasing in nature.

“Nostalgic?” Mari pinches an uneaten piece of tempura from Minako’s bento with her hands. “You’re getting soft Minako,” Mari lets the words slide out of her mouth slowly. Sweet sticky molasses laden with poison. Diluted such that Minako would eat it up, and then furrow her brow and realize that she’s almost been insulted.

Minako pretends that she doesn’t hear. She wipes down the bar, tends to customers, and changes the station so that they can watch some kind of cooking show. Minako can’t cook to save her life, but she always puts them on for Mari so that, “she can learn to make something new for once.”

“By the way Katsuki dear.” Mila makes her rounds through the bar, and leans over Mari’s shoulder. She refills Mari’s cup so that it’s brimming with sho-chu. “You’re an asshole.”

* * *

 

“There’s dancer’s here,” Mila texts. Then, she sends a snap. Girls with long legs and pert breasts, and too tight, too short dresses. Everything about their image is designed to make you sweat, and want, and need.

It doesn’t do much for Mari. What’s a look without substance. Still, she’s too drunk to respond with much else other than, “Pretty.”

“Prettier than me?” Mari snaps back a pouting face.

Mari doesn’t respond right away. Minako’s happy and drunk and showing her dance moves, and showing her photos from her last weekend trip to Beppu. “Look Mari, this one looks like a cooking pot,” she say showing her the natural springs and onsen of Beppu, as if she hasn’t been there countless times before.

* * *

 

“If you’re awake rn, I’m drunk.”

Of course Mari’s awake. She’s stumbled back from Minako’s, slept for a few hours, and decided that she’s awake for the morning. The sun isn’t even up yet. Mari needs a glass of water. She needs to go for a walk and stretch her legs. She’s sore from sitting so long at the bar.

Victor and Yuuri are about to leave for St. Petersburg, and the whole ordeal leaves her with nothing but nervous energy. Mari would much rather they just stay here all the time, but then again the world would be a much more boring place if everyone was a homebody like her.

It seems like Mila’s night has not yet ended.

“I’m up.”

“Look, I know that it makes you uncomfortable when I hit on you.” Another text chimes in immediately, “But, okay just listen.”

Oh. So that’s what they were doing this morning. The “typing” dots start moving, and don’t stop. Mari’s getting a novel.

“When I was fifteen I met Georgi. Georgi was so nice to these girls he was with. He took them on dates, he made them dinner, he got them gifts, but not like shitty ones. Not like, here’s some jewlery get on my cock.”

Mari smiles when she reads the message. She knows this story well enough too. Seeing others drift through life and love and having impossible standards set by close friends that aren’t options. She saw it when she was young and Minako took vacations with partners to places like Paris and Las Vegas, and Jamaica. She sees it now with Victor and Yuuri.

Mari texts her again.

The texts are riddled with typos in the only way that a drunk person can type with urgency. “They were nice Mari. This one girl was a student and broke her laptop. Georgi got her a new one, and the license for software she needed. There was another girl. She lived in Moscow. He wrote poetry for her. He wrote them out on really nice stationary and got her nice stationary and pens so she could write back. Never did.”

Another text comes through. “He’s a good listener too. I had a huge crush on him.” Lots of extra, additional information. Mila apparently was quite drunk.

“I’m NOT trying to fuck Georgi.” Okay. So there’ that. But seeing Georgi be so nice to those girls, I thought that’s the kind of guy I’d want when I got a boyfriend. Hanging out with you at Worlds was the same.”

Mari feels her stomach drop. Drunken texts are one thing. Epistolary disasters are another. She figured this was coming, but she didn’t anticipate it so quickly.”

“The other day when I went out with that girl, the one who got shitty that I’m bi. That’s not the first time I went out with a girl. I like you.”

“I sound stupid don’t I?” Mari double texts.

Against her better judgement, Mari responds, “No. Not at all.”  
  
Ther phone pings again. “When we went out after worlds, like I know it wasn’t a date, but we did some date-ish stuff. You were nice to me. There wasn’t some kind of secret test I had to pass before you were nice. When I find a girl to date and fall in love with, I want it to be like that.”

Mari opens her photos and looks at the screenshot. Red hair, pink lip gloss, soft skin. She can almost smell the fabric softener on the pink pajamas. Of course Mila is attractive. Anyone with eyes could see that. Mari wasn’t ready for this level of raw emotional intimacy. How could anyone be so open and so exposed after meeting just once?

“Sorry.”

Mari thinks about all of the times she’s felt the tug at her chest, the warmth in her stomach of falling in love, or at the very least, initiating the wild and unstoppable process of an affair. Mari thinks about all of the times she’s felt the bile rise in the back of her throat when things dissolved. She considers for a moment how especially strong that feeling is when you know things were doomed from the start.

Mari doesn’t want Mila to go through any of that.

“It’s fine. I’m a little confused why me of all people, but it’s fine.” It’s the truth. As much as she looks at the younger woman with fear and apprehension, the magnetic pull is undeniable.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So thanks to reader support of this rarepair, I have the top fic in the Mari/Mila tag. But also, because this is a rarepair, I have the only fic on the Mari/Mila tag XD. I will update this again sometime this week finishing the fic.

“Are hot tubs the same as onsen?”   
  
Mari feels her jaw drop, smack against the table, and then go lower to the floor. She holds Mila’s name down on her snapchat contacts, and replays the snap. She to make sure she hasn’t hallucinated the entire image as a result of the bad wine and even worse chocolate she’s currently inhaling over the stainless steel industrial sink in the kitchen. Her stash has run dangerously low lately due to the off season. Victor and Yuuri haven’t traveled anywhere with Yurio that has good chocolate: Belgium or France or Germany.   
  
Mila is standing in front of a full length mirror. A fluffy white towel is wrapped around her hips. It’s the way that men sling their towels around them before going into the onsen. She’s never seen a woman hold their towel that way. Yuri can see the flat of her stomach. Mila despite having delicate and beautiful routines, is quite toned. Mari doesn’t imagine what it would be like to kiss that skin and see the muscles flutter and ripple beneath her touch.  
  
In the photo, Mila crosses her arms across her chest and holds the phone at an angle such that her breasts are obscured.   
  
As disappointed as Mari feels, perhaps it’s for the best. She might die if she saw more.   
  
Mari considers her options for response. She types and deletes several responses into the chat feature.   
  
“What are you saying Mari?”   
  
Mari begins to write what must be her fourth potential response to Mila’s text. However, another notification rolls across the screen   
  
In the next snap, Mila is very, very naked. Her lower half is obscured by the churning water of the hot tub. Mila can see the slight “v” of her pelvis, the curve of her stomach, and her hour glass waist. Mila’s breasts are exposed. Mari can see the blush red skin of her nipples. As sappy as it sounds, Mila’s body pales in comparison to the expression on her face. The ends of her hair were damp and clung to her jawline. Her lips were full, almost pouty, her skin was flushed from the heat, and her eyes were half lidded. She looks like something out of a fashion magazine. An artistic image that wasn’t meant for raw consumption and gratification, but instead promised something more dangerous and sophisticated.   
  
Mari’s mouth goes slack again. The just lit cigarette that was perched in the corner of her mouth fell out and tumbled to the floor. It’s not fair. How this girl can make her feel like she’s never seen a naked woman before?  
  
Mari can’t shake the feeling though. If she were at the onsen, Mari would push her up out of the water, make her drink something cold, eat her out until her legs felt like gelatin.   
  
“I’m really upset that I used my replay on the first image?”   
  
“Right!?” The next image is a selfie. Mila’s got the flower crown filter on, it’s her favorite. Her breasts are pressed together as she leans forward, presumably against the edge of the hot tub to snap a photo.   
  
The photos don’t stop coming after that. Mila will indulge her after a night out drinking, or when she’s finished training. Mari learns that the figure skater owns lace panties in every shade of day glow. She’s the kind of person who takes the time to match her bras with her underwear.   
  
They never come when Mari has a slow day at the onsen. It’s always when the place is overflowing with guests, specifically very young children and easily scandalized elderly.   
  
Mari dropped her phone into a pot of miso when she learned that Mila has a fuchsia colored “rabbit” toy, and knows how to use it.   
  
Mari had to send an email, an email because she’s an old woman, to explain why she was without a phone for almost a week.  
  
Mila seemed pleased about this.   
  
Mari had to explain to no less than seven hungry customers why they couldn’t have miso, a staple, for dinner.   
  
After her phone is repaired, Mari sends a snap of her feet up against the wall of the onsen. “The difference is, this one smells like minerals, not chemicals.”   
  
The next morning, Mari reads Mila’s responding message, “You should send me a pic. Like the ones I send you.”   
  
Mari opens the message while she’s changing out of her pajamas. She strides over to the full length mirror that is attached to the wall just to the left of her dresser. Mari’s never cared much about her appearance. The bleach blonde was one of those artifacts from when she was young. Back then, it made her look cool. Now, it’s a defining characteristic, so it stays.   
  
She’s put on a little weight in the past year. It’s not enough to have to get new work clothes. It is enough to notice when she puts on her skirts and dresses that are reserved for formal occasions. They’re tighter than they were last year. She’s never had to worry about it like Yuuri has. She’s not a professional athlete. She’s drinking more with Minako, and she’s not turning mom down when she wants to walk down to the cafe before the dinner rush and get a slice of cake.   
  
She’s had stretch marks along the crease of her thigh, although new ones have appeared across her stomach recently. There are lines around the creases of her eyes, and on her forehead when she raises her eyebrows that weren’t there before. They’re the kind of little things that don’t matter so much on a day to day basis, but suddenly matter a lot when a gorgeous twenty year old is asking for nude photos.   
  
Like it’s something that she wants to see.   
  
“I don’t do nudes,” she types into the chat feature. She smirks as she continues to tap at the letters on the screen. She can play Mila’s game without sending a photo back. “You can see me in person when you come stay at the onsen.” 

* * *

“So guess what?” Mila’s message appears across her screen, interrupting her morning read of her favorite gossip blog.   
  
Mari’s messages have become less frequent. The season has unofficially begun as the professional skaters begin their progress towards the Grand Prix events. Neither Yuri nor Mila were assigned to NHK this year, but she still figured she’d go with Minako to see Minami skate. The event was only a short train ride away in Fukuoka after all.   
  
Conversely, Yurio’s have become more frequent, to the point of almost being needy. The beginning of the season has been hard for him ever since he started dating Otabek. This season, the post summer drop is exacerbated by the fact that Otabek is applying to colleges in St. Petersburg. Yuri’s texts range from lonely denial, to brimming with excitement for the season ahead. This is combined with sheer panic that their relationship is barreling forward towards a level of commitment and intimacy that most eighteen year olds do not experience.   
  
“What?” Mari responds.   
  
Mari’s never gotten away with anything. It’s why she’s so subdued and so boring now. When she was eight she tried blaming Yuuri on breaking a vase, but mom found out almost instantly, when she realized Yuuri was still in his playpen. When she was fourteen she tried to sneak out and hang out with her older friends at the park after curfew. Dad caught her when he got up in the middle of the night for a glass of juice. When she was twenty she tried to fool around with Minako on the down low, and that blew up in her face in a matter of weeks. When she was twenty-five, she put in an application to the Hilton in Fukuoka as an act of rebellion. Minako said it was a quarter life crisis. She took the train to Hakata station on a weekday, and told mom some kind of lie. One week after the interview, she got an offer. She was asked when she could start.   
  
Mari hung up the phone immediately and never returned any other calls. She never thought she’d get that far.   
  
“It’s a couple months away, but Victor invited me, and Yuri, and Otabek to Yuu-Topia for Christmas and New Year.”   
  
Mila doesn’t even give her time to react. She sends a double message, “Is that okay?” 

* * *

Mari knew that she’d see Mila again. She went to multiple ISU events a year. Yuuri had choreographed both her short program and her free skate.   
  
Mari knew that she’d see Mila again. She craved the quiet, but energetic feeling that enmeshed both of them when they went to the arcade. Not so secretly wanted to hear Mila punctuate her teasing jabs with a laugh that cut through the air, but was round around the edges.   
  
She just can’t help but feel a flutter of anxiety tug at her throat and her chest as the arrival date draws nearer. 

* * *

“Ah, Mila,” Yuuri’s voice is whisper quiet. There’s the hint of a stutter there. The untrained ear would assume that it’s because he’s talking to her in Russian. She knows better. Yuuri Katsuki-Nikiforov can only command that fearsome, sexy, and terrifying demeanor that he possess on the ice. “You’re a grown woman. You can do what you want, but um,” he drains the mini bottle of red wine on his tray table. He winces at the taste. The label reads Pinot Noir, and Yuuri is a sucker for sweet wines, no matter how hard Victor tries to “fix” his taste. “Can you please stop asking how to best get in bed with my sister?”   
  
Yuri mashes the screen on his tablet, and yanks an earbud out of his ear. “What the actual fuck?” The movement and the incoherent growling noises that Yuri makes wakes Otabek up. He’d been sleeping against Yuri’s shoulder despite the reclining seats. “I knew you were desperate to get laid, but don’t drag Mari into this. She’s actually not the worst person.”  
  
“Mila!” Victor interjects. “Mari Mari-Neesan has caught your eye?” Victor turns around in his seat, and raises up on his knees to look over her over the headrest like a young child. Victor bisects his lips with his index finger, and taps his finger to his mouth in thought. “I suppose you’re good enough for her. Plus she probably hasn’t had a lover in awhile.”   
  
“Victor,” Yuuri moans in misery.   
  
“The thing you have to consider with Mari-Neesan is that she’s quite shy and under confident like my Yuuri. She just does a better job of hiding it.”   
  
“Shut up hag,” Yuri interjects. “Mila is NOT good enough for her. She’s a dirty hag.”  
  
“Mari likes taking care of people. It’s how she shows love."

* * *

“So, if you haven’t noticed,” Mari pulls the third consecutive bundle of sheets out of a large cavernous closet. Mila accepts it immediately and throws it onto a pile. “Space is kind of at a premium.” Otabek and Yurio are in Yuuri’s old room. Victor and Yuuri are back in their usual room. There was one very obvious place that Mila could stay.   
  
“Is that right?” Mila says like it in a deep and husky tone that isn’t at all warranted for the situation. Making up beds is the least sexy thing that Mari can contemplate, and she says this as a person who regularly cleans baths, and cooks for strangers.   
  
“Yeah,” Mari extracts a small mountain of pillows from the closet, and throws several in Mila’s direction. She throws pillow cases too.   
  
Without skipping a beat, Mila starts shoving pillow cases into the pillows. She doesn’t make sure that the corners of the pillow are aligned with the corners of the case. The end product is lumpy and uneven. “At night, we can set up a futon for you in the cleared out dining area,” Mari supplies. She refuses to be “that person,” who has the hot twenty year old to sleep in their room without considering her need for privacy. Not that the dining room is that private. Yuuri and Yuri always stumble downstairs for snacks. Victor is an early riser, and she’s seen him in his underwear for morning coffee more times than she’d like to admit. “Or, um,” fuck don’t be weird about it. Futon on floor until further interest is expressed. Assume nothing. The intense number of nudes she’s sent means nothing. “We could put a futon on the floor in my room.”   
  
“I don’t like either of those,” Mila supplies. “Sleep on the floor in the drafty dining room? Or on the floor?” She purses her lips slightly. “What about your bed?”   
  
Mari doesn’t say anything in response right away. She stomps down the hall with a bundle of sheets and pillows under each arm.   
  
There’s the thump of footsteps right behind her.   
  
Mari throws a fitted sheet across the mattress. Mila catches the corner, and stretches it out over the corner of the bed. They repeat these motions wordlessly, until the bed is made up. Then, Mari gathers the rest of the sheets, and shuffles down the hall to where Otabek and Yurio will be staying.   
  
As she passes the staircase, she can hear the sound of the boys arguing downstairs. Yurio is yelling. Yuuri is laughing. Victor is moaning in anguish.   
  
“Why don’t they help you do this?” Mila throws a sheet across the futon, and Mari catches it easily. She puts one pocket of the sheet over the corner, and then the other.   
  
“I guess I don’t ever ask,” Mari responds. Mari straightens the top sheet and folds down the edge. It doesn’t matter, Yuri and Otabek won’t get underneath the top sheet. They’ll cuddle close underneath the large duvet alone.

“You can stay in my bed,” Mari decides finally. “So long as you don’t snore.” It’s strange. Mila’s sent her all kinds of racy photos. They’ve had several late night phone calls, and endless streams of emotional texts. But it feels like they’re picking up right where they left off at Worlds. Two people who barely know each other, but just might like each other.   
  
“Really?” Mila’s eyes light up. She drops the sheet and purses her lips together like she expects something to happen right away. Mari would absolutely love to. But she’s got to make dinner.   
  
“Yeah,” Mari strides around the bed. She leans into Mila’s space, and she can smell the earthy “perfume” that she wears. Her lip gloss is shiny wet on her mouth. Her eyes are wide, like she’s waited eight whole months for this.   
  
Mari is acutely aware that she smells like bleach, and onions, and fish from the market. It doesn’t help that she threw on a robe from the “dirty” pile this morning. She diffuses the situation quickly by playfully flicking Mila’s nose. “Let’s put this one back into the closet. Then, you can take a bath.”   


* * *

“There’s no one to take a bath with,” Mila explains when she throws open the kitchen door, pulls up a wooden stool to the counter, and watches Mari chop radishes like it’s the most interesting thing in the world.   
  
In the dining area she can hear the sound of dad scooting around and setting tables. Dishes clink against the counter tops while Toshi sings softly to himself underneath his breath. The lucky cat clock in the foyer chimes at the top of the hour with five, “meows,” in rapid succession.   
  
Mari finds a spare cutting board, and gets the extra chef’s knife from the block. It’s the one that mom uses when she does prep with Mari. “No slacking in my kitchen.”   
  
“You like putting people to work huh?” Mila accepts the knife and the parsnips she places in front of her.   
  
“Yurio deserved it.”

“I’m used to it.” To say that Yurio was being an ass was an understatement. Out of nowhere he started asking Mila all sorts of questions about her exes, and the dates she’d gone on recently in St. Petersburg. She didn’t need an eighteen year old cock blocking her. She had Yurio mop all the floors in the indoor baths, with the caveat that Otabek had to bathe and relax.

“I want these julienned okay?”   
  
“Um…” Mila clenches her teeth and breaks Mari’s gaze in obvious embarrassment.   
  
Mari takes the knife back and shows her how to hold the knife and how to cut down the carrot to size before slicing long even pieces. “Like this. Make sure to take your time.”   
  
Mari turns back to her own prep work, and listens for the even sounds that the knife makes against the cutting board. “You don’t cook much huh?”   
  
“No,” Mila supplies. “Not really. Ah, I ruined this one,” she holds up a mangled parsnip so Mari can see.   
  
“No worries,” Mari takes the vegetable, cuts either end, and hands it back to her good as new. For a moment, the sound of both of them chopping is deafening. Then, they fall into tandem, twin knives making a single _slice thunk_ sound as the back of the blade hits the chopping board. “If you could make anything, what would it be?”   
  
“Hm….” Mila stops chopping in order to think. “When I visited my brother, he took me to a vegetarian restaurant. I had a, Port” her voice stutters slightly over the syllables in the way that multilingual people do. It’s cute. “Portabello burger.”   
  
“Mushroom burger?” Mari takes her cutting board and empties it’s contents into a giant stock pot. She switches out Mila’s too. Then she throws a mountain of herbs onto Mila’s cutting board. “Strange choice.”   
  
“I don’t eat a lot of meat.” Mila responds. “I don’t like the way it looks when it’s raw.”   
  
“Oh,” Mari feels her gut drop. Mila has supplied this information the same moment that Mari decides to start wrestling with the large packages of pork cutlets in the fridge. So much for having help breading these. “You and Otabek, huh.” Mari also finds an open package of tofu. She can have Mila toss that and they can fry that up, if she doesn’t want a cutlet. “Well,” she dusts her apron off with her hands. Feels Mila’s gaze upon her. It’s frosty cool, but not frigid. It reminds her of running outside on a cold morning and seeing her breath before she can even light up. “Tomorrow, after breakfast we’ll go get some mushrooms.”   
  
“You know how to make it? It had this marinade that-”  
  
“We’ll learn together.” 

* * *

“Do you ever slow down?” 

 

Mari lights up a cigarette and perches it on her lip before plunging her hands into the lukewarm dishwater. Normally Victor would help her with this, but he seems overly interested in Mila’s crush. She couldn’t stand to have him ask her all sorts of invasive questions in the kindest and most genuine tone that only Victor can muster. 

 

“Do you?” Mari responds. 

 

“Every so often,” Mila says. Her tone suggests that she really had to consider all of her options before putting together a response. 

 

“It’s not jumps, and it’s not step sequences, but this is what I do. This is what I think about instead of sleeping. What I can cook better, how I can clean faster, how I can make sure mom, and dad, and Yuuri and Victor have fewer chores to do around here.” 

 

“Do you ever think of yourself?” 

 

“There’s chu-hi in the fridge.” Mari corrects herself when she sees Mila from the corner of her eye, go to the large industrial fridge in the corner. “The smaller fridge out back.” The one where they keep items if they’re having a different dinner than guests, or frozen foods when she can’t stand to look at what she made, or her secret stash of booze and ice cream. 

 

Mila returns with two large cans “Peach or.” Mari watches her scan the can for some clue as to what the flavor is, “Plum?” 

 

“I’ll have plum.” 

 

There’s the sound of Mila popping both cans open. Mila sips the liquid that spills out over the rim. “Oh, this is so sweet. Victor won’t be happy if I put this in my nutrition log.”

 

“Victor won’t be happy, but he won’t say anything. He took four bottles of sake outside. Hey, dry for me.”

 

“I’m so glad I came all this way to do chores,” but Mila grabs the blue dishtowel off the stainless steel counter top by the sink and starts drying. 

 

“To answer your question,” Mari treads carefully. “I do lots of little things for myself. No one notices, especially if I also do so much for them.” 

 

* * *

They drain two cans of chu-hi each in the kitchen. Then, Mari leads her by the hand to the showers. Mila has a plastic mesh basket that’s filled with brightly colored bottles of all kinds of soap and hair product and lotion. It make a jostling sound as it bounces against Mila’s hip in tandem with their steps.

 

Mari leans into Mila’s space. She smells like candy sweet alcohol, and as always, patchouli. She wipes the sweat from her palms against her robe, now changed into the soft pink one she uses for bathing. Then, she grabs for the fabric of Mila’s robe. Hers is newer. There are fewer snags and pills in the fabric.

 

Mila closes her eyes.

 

Mari presses her lips to Mila’s. The kiss is feather light, and barely there. So subtle, that she wouldn’t believe that she did anything at all. Except, Mila whispers under her breath, “Finally.” Then, there’s the sound of Mila’s shower basket clattering against the floor before wrapping her own arms around Mari’s waist, lifting her up off the ground, and kissing her deeply.

 

Mari’s had a lot of first kisses. She can say that none of them are like this. Mila is an impossibly small person. Her grip around her waist is strong. Her chest hurts crushed against Mila’s stomach. “Hey,” Mari struggles against her captor. “Put me down!”

 

“But you’re so cute when you’re caught off guard. “Hey, put me down,”’ Mila teases.

 

Mari’s feet touch the ground again, slowly as if Mila’s reluctant to let go. First her toes graze the tile, then the balls of her feet, and then her heels.

 

“You’re super cute when you’re caught off guard.” Mila scrunches her face and repeats back to Mari in a voice that’s meant to be mocking, but just barely holds the hint of a tease, “Put me down Mila!”.

Mari’s feet touch the ground again slowly, as if Mila’s reluctant to let her go. First her toes grace the tile, then the balls of her feet, and then her heels.

“Okay,” once firmly planted on the ground, and no longer fearing for her life, Mari switches gears. If Mila doesn’t want soft and gentle, she can certainly keep up with brattish and demanding. “Let’s do this right.” She backs Mila into the shower walls, which are damp with droplets of water from other bathers.

She cages Mila against the wall, one arm on the tiles, the other cupping her face and kisses her for again. This time, it finally _feels_ right. Mari becomes hyper-aware of soft her lips are, how soft her skin is, how when she’s close, and they’re kissing like this the earthy smell isn’t bothersome, almost intoxicating.

Mila breathes into the kiss, almost laughs into it. Mari can feel her mouth twist into a smile like it’s the best thing in the world before she breaks the kiss.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to do that!?”

“Hm,” Mari looks at the ceiling in faux contemplation. “Maybe, an hour or so after I decided I wanted to do it?”

“There’s something,” Mila interrupts herself to kiss Mari on the lips. “else,” on the nose. “I want,” the forehead. “to do.” She says it with a wicked and knowing kind of grin. Okay, maybe she’s had some experience since their first drunken heart to heart over text. Mari’s fine with that too.

“This isn’t what I thought you had in mind,” Mari sighs.

Mila took off her robe, peppered butterfly kisses down her neck and shoulders, cracked open another can of chu-hi (they brought several with them to drink in the bath). Mila’s touch was unsteady, but it was anything but uncertain. Her hands trembled when she tugged down the robe, but Mari was naked before her in seconds. Her eyes drifted immediately to Mari’s chest.

She couldn’t help but feel exposed under her wanton and inexperienced gaze. Mari moved to cover herself. Mari doesn’t cover herself.

Mila pushed her hands away with a fierceness that caught her eye back at Worlds.

Mari’s usually the one pushing robes open and pulling arms away. It’s Mari who is hungry, and Mari who desires openly. Mari wrestles control back of the situation in the only way that she knows how. She makes lightening quick work of Mila’s obi, and has her hands jammed down her robe. It gets peeled away immediately. She doesn’t even leave time to feel the cool damp electric of sweat against skin that only a long evening in the kitchen, and standing around the onsen in a robe can produce.

There are more kisses, and hands that bump against one another in the search of more skin, and then Mila’s wrestling the control back from Mari. She pulls back, extracts a green bottle of conditioner with an orange cap from her spilled shower basket. 

“It just, looks so dry in pictures.”

“Thanks,” Mari deadpans. “That’s great for the self-esteem, especially when I’m trying to bed someone who is,” she does quick mental arithmetic in her head, and almost doesn’t say the number when it comes to mind lest Mila come to her senses and call the whole thing off. “Twelve?” She whispers under her breath, “holy shit. Twelve years younger?”

Mila has her sit down on one of the low stools next to an adjoining detachable shower head. She turns on the spray facing outward, and tests it with her hands, before wetting Mari’s hair.

“Wow,” Mila chuckles.

“What?”

“I didn’t think you were like your brother at all. Super chill, kind of a bad ass domestic. But you have this talent.” Mila squeezes a generous portion of thick green tinted gel into her palms. She begins to work it into Mari’s hair, first starting at the root, and then going down to the tips. Her touch tingles against her scalp.

Mari chugs half of her drink in a single gulp, because she does not like where this conversation is going at all.

“You turn it on strong and then you backpedal hard.”

“You’re the one who stopped fooling around to condition my hair,” Mari responds. 

“We have to wait for it to soak in because your hair is so dry. We have plenty of time to fool around more.”

Where their touches before were soft, muted, but lingering, their touches now are faster, sharper, there and then gone before either of them can understand what’s going on. They lather one another in soap, and giggle into patches of suds on each others skin.

Mila teases at Mari’s collarbone, only to frown with disgust, “Yuck!”

“You just put soap there,” she can’t hold back the laugh that begins in her chest, and blossoms outward across her chest, much like the rose colored blush that appeared on that part of her body. Whether its from the heat of the bath, or the budding heat between them, she’ll never know.

Mila rinses out her hair, and by some miracle they make it out to the bath.

* * *

“Ew, it does smell,” Mila scrunches her face in distrust. Despite her hesitance to get into the onsen, she lowers her body further into the hot water.

“It’s good for your skin.”

“Makes it soft?”

“I think so.”

Mila pops open another can of chu-hi.

“Be careful. It’s easy to drink too much in the bath. Goes to your head.”

Mari slides into the water next to Mila. It’s like a dozen or so other nights after the onsen has closed. Alcohol, and hot water, and the promise of something more. Mari whispers to Mila, in Japanese, because her confidence is fleeting, and Mila seems to pull it away in an instant, her fantasy about making Mila come when the water is too hot to bear.

“I have no idea what you just said,” Mila giggles, “But I think it was something like.” Mila whispers something back into her ear Russian. The words make the hair stand up on the back of Mari’s neck. Mila punctuates the statement by latching onto her earlobe.

It’s like a dozen or so other nights, but completely different.

From the men’s side, she can hear the sound of splashing. The embarrassed and flustered cry of, “Victor!” from her brother, Yurio, and Otabek. Mari doesn’t feel in control. Mila teases her with little touches against her thighs and her breasts, and down her back.

It’s going far better than Mari ever imagined. Mila is so responsive to her touches. When she teases at Mila’s nipples, Mila moans into her mouth. When her fingers move lower, Mila melts into her body.  She rocks her hips against Mari’s fingers with every touch.

It’s going far better than Mari ever imagined.

So of course, it has to go horribly horribly wrong.

“Mari,” Mila’s voice is no longer syrup thick and dreamlike. She pulls back from Mari, and sits on the ledge of the bath. Mari has seen this combination of pale complexion, and glassy eyes before. Too much booze, too much food, too hot of an onsen. “I don’t feel so well.”

* * *

“Oh my god this is so embarrassing.”

The best remedy for getting too hot and too drunk is as follows: get out of the onsen, lay down, and drink ginger ale.  She has administered this remedy on many a sick onsen customer over the years.

Mila’s laying on the cold stone pathway that connects the indoor bath to the outdoor bath. She’s still completely naked. It’s cold out tonight, and for a moment Mari wonders if she should make an effort to move her inside. Then, she remembers all the snaps of her running around outside in the early winter snow in St. Petersburg in little more than a T-Shirt and jeans.

She’s fine.

“It’s really nothing.” Mari feeds her small sips of ginger ale. “At least you didn’t barf.”

“Oh my god,” Mila wails.

“I told you to slow down.” Mari helps her sit, and then puts Mila’s robe around her shoulders.

“I’m Russian. I can drink.”

“Victor totally puked the first time he got drunk in the bath.” Mari helps her stand, pulls her robe tight, and ties her obi shut.

“Seriously?”

“Uh-hum. Let’s try tomorrow.”

Mila whines in protest. Right. Like sloppy, drunk, nauseous sex was the answer right now. “We’ll make mushroom burgers, and not drink before we get into the bath, and you know.” Mari laughs, “everything else that we wanted to do tonight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess june's theme for my writing is failsex .


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully this won't be my last foray into femslash. Thanks to those who took a chance on this rarepair.

Mari wakes up at 5:30 AM as always. Mila stirs next to her on the mattress. “It’s so early.”

“Go back to sleep,” and kisses her on the temple. “You’re jetlagged.”

“No!” Mila whines half-asleep.

“Hungover then.”

“Maybe,” she pouts.

Mari fetches her bottle of water from the night stand, and makes Mila drink half of it before tucking the duvet back around Mila’s shoulders and extracting herself from bed.

She dresses and gets ready for the day as quietly as possible. Then, she sneaks down the stairs. She takes the time to skip the third step, and then second to last step, those squeak when you step on them. Rounding he corner, she bumps into a broad chest clad in little more than an apron.

“Victor, what the fuck?”

“Good morning Mari-neesan,” Victor beams at her with a wide open mouthed grin. “My Yuuri and I are taking care of everything for you today so you can spend the day with your Mila.”

Mari does her best to try to contain her absolute horror at the scene before her. There are several large stockpots on the stove that are on the precipice of boiling over. Victor is shirtless underneath his apron. The only thing that keeps her from screaming and chasing him out of the kitchen is the current assumption that nothing has gone wrong yet, and sight of Yuuri at the counter.  

Mari keeps a stool tucked underneath one of the tall prep counters in the kitchen instead of going out to the dining room. She sits at the counter with a cup of coffee and watches with rapt fascination as Yuuri goes about breakfast prep with precise familiarity, and Victor does everything in his power to helpfully undo it.

“Victor, what are you doing?”

“This needs spice doesn’t it?”

“It’s already been seasoned. You watched me do that. I told you to stir.”

“How can I pay attention to you when you’re so handsome. Yuuri?” Then Victor’s expression will fall, ever so slightly at the mere thought of being admonished.

At six A.M. Yurio stomps down the stairs with Otabek in tow. She opens her mouth to tell him to quiet down. However, Victor is dead serious about giving her time off, “Yurio, stop stomping.”

* * *

Mari might’ve ended up sprawling across multiple cushions out in the dining room and fallen back to sleep. Might’ve, because she can’t remember a single time in the past decade, or even two decades that she’s done that. Maybe, when she had the flu she slept for most of the afternoon.

Mari rubs the sleep from her eyes. From the corner of her eye, she can see a blurry green onsen robe. Probably Mrs. Yamada, who comes to bathe as soon as they open, and drinks a tea immediately after.  She sits up, and finds a rapidly cooling plate of breakfast before her. Miso, rice, baked salmon, omelet, and all the other little single bites of food that go along with a big onsen breakfast. “What the hell?”

Suddenly, cobalt blue eyes fill her entire field of vision. “You’re dead Mari.”

Mari considers a thousand sarcastic things to say in response. The syllables are all clunky and awkward on her tongue and so the best she can say is, “really?”

“Yeah,” Mila giggles seemingly cured of her jetlag, and her hangover, and looking far too cute in her pajamas. Her hair is wrapped in a wide elastic headband. Mari knows that the other woman nabbed it off of her dresser. “Everything is the same except there’s nothing for you to do. All the chores are done, and there’s nobody to boss around because it’s already done. Your own personal hell.”

“I feel like that’s not true.” It’s surprisingly quiet in the dining area. None of the usual commotion that arises whenever Victor and Yurio are together for too long. Yuuri must’ve sent him out for something, or Otabek must have made him calm down. Mari reaches for her chopsticks. Then, she leans in to steal a kiss from Mila. Her breath is minty, medicinal. “There’s always something,” she begins to manipulate the rice in her dish onto the paper thin wafers of nori. “I think the air vent covers need to be dusted, and,” she presses the rice together with her fingers, and then passes it off to Mila. “No one’s fed you yet.”

Mila accepts the onigiri, takes a bite, chews, and swallows. “Damn. You’re good.”

* * *

Mila spends the rest of the morning getting ready. She takes a lengthy bath, and then makes a big show of coming back to Mari’s room in nothing more than a series of precariously placed towels. Then, she sits at Mari’s desk and blow dries her hair.

“Mila?”

“Hm?” She hums over the tinny sound of her cellphone blasting out music through under powered speakers.

There was a girl once visiting from Osaka. She lived in a high rise, and claimed to have a modeling contract. Mari didn’t say a thing about her long acrylic nails.

She’d never make that mistake again.

Mila has long nails that are covered in chipped pink polish. “In the top drawer. I have fingernail clippers. Use them.”

* * *

When they finally leave the house, Mari wonders for a moment what it is that they should do. She could take her to the shrine, or to the castle, or she could make good on her promise of trying to teach her how to cook.

There are three good grocers in Hasetsu. Mari won’t even bother with the smaller corner stores that just sold staples: the Family Mart, or the small grocery over by Minako’s place. It isn’t until they go to the third store, the open air market on the other side of town, that they find what they’re looking for. Big mushrooms with short cut stems and hairy caps underneath.

“We need buns. Cheese too.”

Those kinds of things are only available at the supermarket. The one that is across town, and takes a train transfer. The one that they were at an hour ago. Mari tries to hide the way that her lip quivers with dissatisfaction. There’s no need to become upset. After all, when was the last time she had an entire day off? Sure she traveled for skating competitions. At least once per year Minako dragged her to Sapporo for a long weekend. This was different. When was the last time she had the chance to just exist in Hasetsu?

A silence envelops them on their short walk between transfer stops. Mari isn’t sure if it’s comfortable, or if it is awkward. She herself is used to the silence. She does errands alone, or with people that she sees so often, there’s rarely anything new to speak of. She’s not sure if she knows Mila well enough for it to be comfortable and intimate despite the fact that the girl slept in her bed, and is wearing her hairband, and has seen her naked.

Mila finally breaks the silence once they get to the bus stop platform. “You know why I like you?”

Not the kind of void filling conversation she was expecting. It makes her ears burn hot.

“You get flustered really easily,” Mila laughs. “You blush when you’re flustered.”

“I do not.” It comes off as more of a whine than she would’ve liked, but the fact of the matter is, “I have seen things you would not imagine at the onsen. Cellulite that looks like starry constellations.” Mari turns the pack of cigarettes in her pocket end over end, before deciding that it could wait. She didn’t want to blow smoke in Mila’s face. “The saddest and wrinkliest penises, you can’t imagine. Unless you can because you seem to chase after old folk.”

“Are you insulting…Yourself?”

Mari waves her hands in dismissal. “Stretchmarks in every color. Mila, I’ve seen it all.”

“I like that you dressed up today, even though we’re just going to the store. You have to do that like, every day right?”

“Dressed up?” Mari murmurs softly. She’s wearing a dress that she keeps in th back of her closet. The waistline gathers high on her ribcage, and the skirt goes on for miles and miles down her legs. It has big spacious pockets so she can hold her keys and her cigarettes. Although Mila usually sees her in photos in her work uniform. “Only once or twice a week. Dad usually goes to the fish market and the green grocer.

“I like that you don’t treat me differently than anyone else. Don’t take that the wrong way.”

The shopping bags jostle on their wrists, and the sound is deafening.

“Huh?”

“Other people that I’ve wanted to….” Mila’s voice trails off. She moves the shopping bags in her right hand to her left hand. She pulls her hair out of Mari’s thick hairband, and so that it hangs loosely around her neck. Then, she scratches at the scalp. When her hair is properly mussed, she keeps talking.  “Other people always see this world class athlete. Someone who will literally die if they drink how many grams of sugar?” Mila’s face is tinged pink in the cold winter air. Her eyes are wide open pools of raw emotion, that Mari’s certain she’s felt before. “They see some fucking hot chick that they just wanna fuck.” Mila’s voice rises as she talks, and cracks with each syllable.

Mari feels as if she should comfort her. Drop her shopping bags, and wrap her arms around her. She feels frozen in place at the display of raw emotion.

“But you see me. I guess it’s because you’ve had years of dealing with Victor and Yuuri but,” the cool winter wind whips around them as the train pulls into the track opposite their stop. Mila’s hair gets stuck in the corners of her mouth. In what seems like slow motion, Mila unloops the shopping bags from her wrists, pulls off her gloves, and pulls the hair out of her face. “You see me. Someone who likes cartoons, and arcade games, and”

Mari sees a thin sliver of moisture glide down Mari’s cheek. In that moment, everything clicks back into place, and her body works in tandem with her brain once more. She drops her bags too. Her feet move shakily as if they’re made of lead.

“Mila,” her name comes out as a half choke-half sob that’s unworthy of the beauty that is her name. Their train roars into the station, but Mari doesn’t care. She cups Mila’s face and seals her lips with a kiss.

* * *

They missed the train. Mila shoved her hands into the pockets of Mari’s dress. Mari’s hands worked their way up underneath her jacket, and were set aflame by warm skin. She feels like a goddamn teenager again, pawing on a girl in public.

When they get back to Yuu-topia, they don’t even put their groceries away. Mari throws everything into the kitchen, and finds Yuuri getting things ready for the dinner rush. He’s alone this time, which is probably for the best. “Put this away for me.”

“You’ve still got your outdoor shoes on!” Yuuri scolds.

Mari doesn’t care. She races across the tatami floor and almost knocks over Victor on her way up the stairs. How many times has she scolded Yurio for doing the exact same thing?

* * *

Mari undoes the buttons on Mila’s shirt one handed. With her other hand, she cups Mila’s face while they kiss. She pulls the rose patterned shirt down her shoulders. She can feel the girl’s flesh pebble with gooseflesh at the exposure. The big open rooms of the inn are drafty.

Mari soothes it away by ghosting her lips across Mila’s exposed skin. As soon as her mouth touches warm velvet skin, Mila lets out an exhale. In an instant all the tension is drained from her body. Her eyes close, and her head droops forward slightly into Mari.

It is as if Mari touches her with a gentleness that she’s never experienced. Mari doesn’t want to generalize, but she remembers experimenting. She remembers the way men, young men at least, have a way of suckling on breasts as if they were nursing, or pinching and twisting nipples until they were oversensitive, and prickled with pain.

Mari does neither of these things. Mari lets her finger tips wander down Mila’s chest. With her index finger, she traces her sharp collar bones. Mari brushes the small purple mark that she left on the ridge of her clavicle. Whether it was from last night, or this afternoon at the station, Mari is uncertain. She wants to know, because wants to catalogue every inch of Mila so she can remember when she’s gone.

Mari will remember this moment as if it were the few seconds after drawing in a deep breath of air, but before you had permission to blow out the candles on a birthday cake. She will remember it as raw excitement in suspended animation. How will Mila remember it? Will Mila remember it at all in a dozen years?

Mila can’t mask the little embarrassing noise that spills from her mouth. Mari traces each breast, avoiding any lingering attention on her nipple, then she cups her breasts with barely there touches that make Mila keen into her touch and whine for more.

Mari kisses her again. Keeps the touches and the kiss feather light. Mila desperately opens her mouth and tries to deepen the kiss, but Mari keeps her grounded, and the only thing she can do is moan breathily into Mari’s mouth.

“Feels good right?” Mari pulls away and smiles.

Mari knows that Mila’s experienced this kind of subtle smirk before. With Sven, and Dietrich, and Mikhail and whatever other names tumbled out of Yurio’s mouth yesterday when he was being an ass. It’s a knowing little smile that implies that they know something about her body that she doesn’t.  It comes across as cocky, and arrogant on them. On Mari it’s gentle, and almost joyful, if she’s just told her some kind of wonderful secret.

“Yeah.” Mila breathes against her.

Mari rubs a single digit across her nipple in a slow circle until she can feel the soft skin form into a hard peak. Mari repeats the action on another side. Then, she applies pressure Mari’s movements are tender and thoughtful. With every pinch, roll, soothe with the pads of her fingers she wants to convey that none of it is a chore to get to some kind of main event, nor is it teasing. This is required, vital for Mila’s pleasure as well as Mari’s.

Wandering the few steps to bed takes eternity. Mila stops to undo the buttons on Mari’s dress.  Mila’s jeans are peeled away in the shuffle of their bodies. They fall into bed, and Mari pushes Mila onto her back. She dusts soft kisses on her sternum, and underneath her breasts.

Mila punctuates each kiss with a soft giggle.

Mari presses her closed lips against Mila’s nipples and opens her mouth slowly. Then, “ticklish?” Following up on her statement, Mari runs her hands down Mila’s sides.

 It’s amazing, how responsive her body is. How she can make Mila’s eyes go wide with pleasure with just the soft touch of her fingertips, and the slight scratch of her nails.

“It’s different,” and Mila lets the rest of the sentence fall out of her mouth unspoken. There’s no need to repeat out loud what they already know.

“Watch this then.” Mari takes dusky pink nipple into her mouth. She moves her tongue in slow circular motions against the nub of flesh. The sensation makes Mila arch her back into Mari’s touch. It makes her wonder how she’ll move, and how she’ll writhe when her mouth is on other parts of her body.

Mari moves to the other nipple and gives it the same gentle laps of the tongue followed by pressure.

Mila tries to stifle moans into her hand. They’re sharp and captivating like a metal spoon against fine crystal. “Talk to me,” Mari says to her between breathy kisses.

 “When I close my eyes, everything looks pink.” Mila opens her eyes so she can watch Mari with closed eyes suck and lap, and graze ever so lightly with her teeth. “It feels really good,” she confesses.

“Good.” Mari pulls off and Mila is enraptured by the sight of a thin trail of saliva connecting Mari’s lip to her flesh.

“Everything you do,” she grabs Mari’s hand and rests it on her damp panties. “I feel it down here.”

“Everything?” Mari cocks an eyebrow before leaning back into Mila’s body. Mari purses her lips together ad blows cool air on Mila’s nipples, wet and sensitive from the earlier attention.

“Mari!” It’s somewhere between a gasp and a giggle.

“Keep watching Mila,” Mari says in a dry tone. She moves back and forth between her breasts alternating between a warm mouth and cool breath that makes her already hard nipples hum with pleasure. “It’s a good party trick.”

“What kind of parties are you going to?”

Mari kisses down her stomach, and makes sure to pay special attention to her navel, her hip bones, and the little dip where stomach fades into crotch before moving back up her body and starting the process all over again as if she wants this moment last for as long as possible. They may not have the opportunity to do it again.

“You know,” Their lips meet once more and the kiss is rougher and more demanding. Mari brings pressure and firmness into the kiss. Mila nips at her lower lip in response causing Mari to gasp. Mila swallows it up, like it’s the most delicious thing in the world.

“The kind with quiet and repressed Japanese girls.”

“Those sound like really good parties.”

Mari kisses her again, and drags a hand down Mila’s hip. “You wanna?”

* * *

“You wanna?” Mari husks against her ear in a rough, cigarette, and harsh mountain air voice that should sound jagged, but comes across as nothing but mysterious and unbelievably mysterious and sexy.

Mila buries her fingers in thick, almost matted bleach blonde hair and simply stares at Mari. She looks at her almond shaped eyes and the little thin lines around the edges. She makes sure not to linger too long because she knows that Mari would get self-conscious about that kind of thing. Little freckles dot the bridge of her nose from countless hours out in the Kyshuu summer sun. Her cheeks are tinged pink, as if it doesn’t matter how many times she’s done this with girls that wander in to this resort town.

Mila is special. Mari makes sure that she feels this way.

Mila responds by tugging Mari’s leggings down along with her panties.

Mari’s freckles don’t fade away on the bridge of her nose. She has several on her chest, and a light tan colored birthmark on her left breast that looks like an angel kissed her there. Mari’s noticed these little marks on Mari’s body before in the hot spring, but this is the first time she’s ever had the opportunity to look as much as she wants. “Of course I want to.” she murmurs feeling totally dumbstruck and mesmerized by the sight of Mari’s skin open and exposed and hers to look at and touch and tease, fully and in person, not a whole continent away. “Oh!” Mila perks up and meets Mari’s half lidded gaze with eyes that are bright, and filled with the sparkle and the smile of mischief. “I learned a party trick. Let me show you.”

* * *

Mila starts with too much pressure. She gropes and tugs on her breasts, and for a moment she is in the back seat of Matsuda-kun’s car when she was fifteen years old. The movements are rough and uncertain, and although they should be off-putting Mari finds the endearing.

She’s been a “first” for many a curious tourist girl. She’s used to the teasing, and the assumption of intimacy, and the lipstick, and the determined but almost helpless nature of women like Mila. The whole thing screams pillow princess, and Mari has never ever been more grateful to be wrong.  

Mila’s hands roam lower, and part her legs. She runs a finger down Mari’s outer labia lightly, experimentally.

“It’s okay.” Mari said it as a way to encourage, but her voice cracks in the process.

Mila parts her gently. Then, there is more soft touching against her inner folds, along her slit, and then finally her clit.

Mari lets out a contented sigh. Her touch is far from perfect, but it fans the embers of flame that she knows will build slowly between them.

Then, like a light switch thrown on, Mila’s demeanor changes. Mila’s habit of hoisting people and things up and into the air carry over into the bedroom. Mila hoists her hips up high, holds them midair, and then latches onto every bit of skin she can find between Mari’s legs. 

Someone lets out an undignified yelping noise, and Mari’s shocked and ashamed to learn that it comes from her. “Mila!”

Much like the way she uses her hands, the way Mila uses her mouth is unrefined, yet irresistible. She worries marks between her thighs, and plunges her tongue inside without warning.

“Mila!” she repeats and writhes helplessly on the mattress. There is a part of her that wants to coach and wants to train, “a little lighter, a little lower.” There is a part of her that feels so unimaginably helpless.  Mila entered her life quietly, but commanded her attention dramatically.

Mila rakes her tongue upward and finds her clit. Mari doesn’t have a chance. Her enthusiasm means that she could objectively receive the worst oral ever, and it would still be better than the best and most technical from her least enthused partners. Mila’s zeal alone will be enough to get her there.

* * *

Somehow, despite it all, she manages to choke out in a broken sob, “Mila please, you have to let me do it for you too.”

Mila doesn’t argue. She doesn’t feign embarrassment when Mari instructs her to turn around and straddle her.

She does give the _cutest_ little whine when Mari pulls her hips and her ass forward, so that Mila is sitting on Mari’s face. In her current position she can discover Mila slowly, with her fingertips and her tongue. She can see the exact crease in her skin where bright pink skin darkens to rouge.

Mari has her favorite techniques of course. She laps along Mari’s folds, and then alternates between soft probing motions with her tongue and pressure with her lips against Mila’s clit. Although it’s difficult, with Mila buried between her thighs, and heavy handedly trying to hit every single spot at the same time, she does her best to listen to the way that Mila’s body responds.

Mila likes it when she teases, she _loves it_ when she applies pressure.

“Mari,” Mila pulls away from her with a soft smack of lips against skin. That’s all the warning she gets before Mila’s legs, firm and muscular quiver underneath her grasp. Drowned in passion, Mila pushes against Mari, and Mari greedily accepts every bit of Mila that she can get.

* * *

Mari didn’t know what to expect afterwards. Mila certainly proved that she wasn’t willing to just sit back and watch. When Mila righted herself and rolled over, gone was the aggressive and wanton woman that straddled her face moments before. Mila pulled their bodies close so that they were in an almost spooning position. Mari on her back, and Mila laying on her side.

“Mari, that was so good,” she purrs into her ear. “What do you like?”

Mila grabs for the wandering hand at her side, and pushes back down between her legs. “Fingers,” she whispers into Mila’s collarbones. “Lots of them.”

Every so often an errant ember will catch on her clothes. The burn will spread slowly across the fabric, until Mari can feel the urgent and dangerous burn tug at her skin, and she has to put it out.  

It happens this way with Mila. Two fingers right away, then the stretch of the third, and at her limit with four. Her uncoordinated, sloppy kisses and discordant touches make her come with a loud and undignified gasp.

* * *

“Can I tell you a secret?” Mila whispers into her ear.

“Please,” Mari fiddles with an unlit cigarette in her hand. A new kind of desire pulls her attention away from Mila. Habit and addiction are powerful mistresses.

“I never um,” she sucks her lower lip in-between her teeth, and it makes Mari want to push her back down onto the bed and start back from the beginning. “I mean on my own, but with somebody else…”

Mari doesn’t say anything. She can’t say anything, because if she does she’ll only be able to respond coolly, “I could tell,” because she could. It showed through in the way that Mila was so overeager. It showed through in the way that she was scrubbed raw and laid bear with even the simplest of gestures.

"I've never come with a partner before."

Mari wished that she hadn’t acknowledged it. She could’ve kept the knot in her throat at bay. She could’ve ignored the pounding in her chest.

“You’ll expect it from now on, right?”

Mila nods.

“Good.”

* * *

The rest of Mila’s time in Hasetsu is similar to her first few days. They drink, they bathe, and they pull their robes off of one another with shaky hands.

They tell each other things about their pasts, because the present seems so surreal. Visitors’ days in Hasetsu are just a sliver of a fraction of a moment. For the first time, Mari feels that they are the same way for herself. Talking about things that were real solidifies that these moments too, are real.

They tell each other their dreams for the future. Mila wants to become a social worker. Mari wants to remodel the place so they have overnight rooms like a real ryokan should. Talking about these things that are so distant and so intangible reminds them that these moments are unreal.

* * *

Mari kisses Mila on the forehead at 5:27 A.M. Mari doesn’t set an alarm. Not only does she not need it, she’d never risk waking Mila up. When her hair is scattered around her head like a halo of roses, and when she looks so peaceful and so good in Mari’s nightgown, it’s difficult to go through the motions of the day ahead.

Despite Mari’s efforts to stay quiet, Mila does what she wants when she wants. Her eyes flutter open. An anxious whine of protest is torn from her chest and makes her reach for Mari immediately.

“Ask me to stay,” she coos into Mari’s neck.

Mari feels her own body go rigid. She pulls away from Mila without meaning to. “Why?” She asks when she knows she should just leave it alone. It’s Mila’s last day in Hasetsu. The plane leaves tonight. “So you can tell me no?”

* * *

The first week after Mila leaves, the texts maintain their pre-Hasetsu frequency. She gets multiple snaps and multiple messages.

Mari rarely, if ever responds to them. The other girls, women who came and went, and had fleeting moments in Hasetsu rarely maintained contact. It shakes her to the core despite knowing that they took the time to become friends before they fell into bed.

Mari wanders to the Taito station at ten P.M. one night after the onsen closes. In the forty-five minutes or so she’s there before closing, she wins a three One Piece key chains, a Yo-Kai watch strap, and a Karamatsu coin purse.

The week after, there are fewer. Mila is getting ready for the European Championship. She’s predicted to do very, very well given her performance at the Grand Prix Final. They’ll drop off soon, of the ones that do keep texting always stop when things return to normal.

Another night, Mari pumps 2000 yen into a single machine, one of the last Neko Atsune machines in the city. She wins five plush toys off of the machine.

The week after that they stay consistent with the week before. Infrequent, but still daily interruptions of Mari. Despite desperately feigning disinterest to soften the blow, Mari reads all of them. They don’t stop completely like Mari expected.  Mari wakes up in the morning, only to be upset that there isn’t a small, but impossibly hot body pressed next to her. She’s upset that there’s mop of soft red hair to push back, and no forehead to kiss. At night, there’s no one to sit at the counter and chop herbs at a glacial pace. When it’s late and everyone is gone, she goes out to the women’s bath alone, and it’s upsetting how the once quiet and soothing nights of Hasetsu are now haunting.

It makes her upset that she is so upset.

Mari gets tipped a _lot_ of money by some tourists. Mom and dad always get offended when foreigners tip At this point Mari can’t bring herself to care. They mean well when they do it. Mari gets every cent converted into 100 yen coins. She pumps it all into the gatchapon station outside the DVD store. She gets figurines of deserts, and animals, and anime characters.

Mila keeps texting the week after that, and the week after that, and the week after that. Mari continues to not respond. It’s only a matter of time before Mila meets someone else who is younger, and prettier, and closer and moves on.

* * *

 

“Katsuuukkkiiiiiiiiiii,” Minako’s voice is low, which means that she is trying to imitate a “serious” tone. Except that she’s four large bottles of Kirin deep, and couldn’t convey seriousness if her life depended upon it.

Minako leans over the low table in Yuu-topia’s dining area. Then, she all but crawls over the table top. When her face is pressed millimeters away from Mari’s face, she flicks her nose. “You fucked up didn’t you?”

“Minako,” Her lips curl into a forced smile, broken down the middle by the cigarette that droops from her mouth. “If you touch me again, I will permanently ban you from bringing your own liquor.”

* * *

“Hey asshole,” Yurio texts her sometime early March. “If you’re coming to worlds get your shit together. Or I’ll kick your ass,” Yurio texts one afternoon. Very quickly, as if he can sense Mari’s unease from across the ocean, he double texts. “And you’re coming. That’s not open for discussion.”

Victor calls her one afternoon. It’s still quite early in St. Petersburg. In near perfect Japanese, Victor chimes in over the phone before she can even say, “hello,”

“Mari-neesan, about Worlds.”

She hangs up on him mid-sentence, “I expect you at Worlds in order to-“

_Click_

It takes Yuuri to change her mind. It always takes Yuuri. “You should come Mari. Whatever it is, it’s okay.”

So Mari, against her very best judgement, gets her passport, and her best dresses with pockets, and a carry-on filled with hundreds of gatchapon and UFO toys she’s gathered over the past few months.

After the short program, Mari throws a few items out onto the ice. The Russian press has started referring to Mila as the Butterfly because of her short program. The costume has long sheets of gauze underneath her arms that fan out like wings. Mari throws a few butterflies out onto the ice, before she’s herded over to the kiss and cry by Victor.

Mari is flash-bulb blinded for a moment. Although Mila is getting shepherded out of the kiss and cry, the press is everywhere. Mila’s just broken a personal best.  When the stars fade from her eyes, Mari’s blinded once more by the sight of Mila in her shimmering costume. The fabric is sheer cyan, which fades into black accents.

“Mari?”

Mari can feel the knot that had started the minute Mila got onto the plane to leave Japan constrict around whatever kind of spine she’d tried to grow since then.

“You came?” She can see the glassy finish of Mila’s eyes. Two teardrops well up and spin down from her eyes. “Here? For me?”

“Stop being a fucking asshole,” she can hear a dark and angry voice from behind her. Then someone shoves her forward, and immediately she places the voice and the pressure on her back. She’s going to kick Yurio’s ass for kicking her forward, right after she thanks him.

Her totebag flies off of her shoulder, and from it spill a hundred or more prizes from games that didn’t really ever matter. She flies face first into the floor at the feet of the first woman who ever kept contact after a long holiday in Hasetsu.

Mari’s face hits the floor, but Mila’s the one that’s gasping in shock.

Mari rolls over, and she’s blinded for a third time by the large fluorescent bulbs that hang above the rink. Then, Mila’s face blocks them out once more.

The press titters and buzzes around them.

“Mari, are you okay?”

“I think I love you,”

“That doesn’t make up for the past few months.” Mari can hear the rustle of fabric around her before she sees the arena lights being blocked out. “You’re such an idiot.” Mila has raised her arms and wrapped her gauzy wings around Mari’s face, effectively blocking them both from the press’ view.

Her lips are soft and tacky with lip gloss.


End file.
